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Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
Posted
in Crestock Photoshop Contest 2006
on
25. November 2006
by Audioslave
Ive been looking at the votes for the entries in the Photoshop competition. There are some entries that I really like, they are technically good, creative, etc. Most of these have low scores. Then there are some entries that are just awful, probably made in 2 minutes, but have a lot higher votings. I think this whole contest is going to be decided by who has the most friends to get to vote for him/her, or access to most computers. Yes, the judges vote counts 50%, but still. I think when giving away prizes this cool, the winner should really deserve them. The best designs should win. Maybe only the judges should decide, or the public vote should count less? It seems to me like people are voting everyone elses designs very low in order to try to win themselves... What do you think?
Props to Crestock for what really is the coolest Photoshop contest ever :D
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
Audioslave (11/25/2006)
Ive been looking at the votes for the entries in the Photoshop competition. There are some entries that I really like, they are technically good, creative, etc. Most of these have low scores. Then there are some entries that are just awful, probably made in 2 minutes, but have a lot higher votings. I think this whole contest is going to be decided by who has the most friends to get to vote for him/her, or access to most computers. Yes, the judges vote counts 50%, but still. I think when giving away prizes this cool, the winner should really deserve them. The best designs should win. Maybe only the judges should decide, or the public vote should count less? It seems to me like people are voting everyone elses designs very low in order to try to win themselves... What do you think?
Props to Crestock for what really is the coolest Photoshop contest ever :D
Totally Agree with this, already emailed Crestock about it saying almost the same as you. I think the judges should decide who wins and have other peoples votes just for fun.
At the end of the day Crestock is making a big effort in getting top professionals around the world to judge this competition.
Posted: 26. Nov 2006 by andresr
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
What friends ? You don't need friends. Whoever disables cookies can vote countless times as an unregistered user. I believe Crestock should remove all non-judge voting from this contest. I would like my entry to be reviewed by crestock contest team and not by whoever can press F5 faster... Thanks Konstantinos
Posted: 26. Nov 2006 by 3pod
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
It is written in the rules that they do check the votings to some degree, so if someone votes 1000 times for a design they will probably notice it. But still, if someone gives his/her design a 10 a couple of times, gives all the other entries a 1 a couple of times, and gets a lot of other people to do the same, it will still affect the voting in a big way.
Im not saying that everyone is doing this, most people are probably not cheating, but still. There will always be some who will exploit the system to achieve greater profits for themselves. And since there might not be that many who cheat, the ones who do will achieve even higher scores.
Posted: 26. Nov 2006 by Audioslave
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
I agree. I voted once for what I considered to be the worst image, just to see if the site required registration or made any attempt to validate the vote as unique.
After realizing that there were no restrictions, I haven't voted again, since I'm not even sure that I could be fair given the prizes involved. (How could I not give myself a 10, for instance?)
Certainly it seems questionable that 50% of the final score could literally go to the person with the least integrity, the most access to different Internet connections and/or (as was stated) the most friends.
I think it's obvious (given the extremely low scores on all the entries) that most people are arbitrarily giving their competition "low" scores.
If the voting isn't a little more fair, I agree that the judge's vote should have much more weight.
Posted: 27. Nov 2006 by SoundBlstr
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
We do think it's a good thing that everyone can have a say on what they like, not just the 'professionals', but of course we also agree that voting should be as fair as possible.
Looking at the scores for various entries over the weekend, it looked like this perhaps wasn't the case. After validating the votes on Monday (and removing 5595 duplicate votes), I think most of us would agree that the scores now look much more like what you'd expect.
The remaining votes will also be validated before counting towards the final public vote score.
For subsequent rounds we will change things a bit to give everyone piece of mind when it comes to the voting, read more about that here: Week 1 voting irregularities
The Crestock Team
Posted: 27. Nov 2006 by Crestock
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
It's not fair..it's absolutely true.
The another odd aspect is that some works still has got more then 200 votes,
it's quite strange and suspicious for me
Posted: 27. Nov 2006 by Damiano
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
yeah it is still wrong; its obvious ..... I doubt it will be possible to make it fair having open voting to non members.
Look at the scores, lots of people are still doing it, some designs with high votes are not that good, sorry.
Why not just restrict the votes to members only? or just count the judges votes and thats it end of story and end this silly vote fraud.
Crestock took off duplicate votes but I am not sure you realize that some connections get different ips when you connect so you can vote more than once by connecting or disconnecting from the internet.
There are always ways to go round it in open online contests, I have had to program stuff like this in the past and it is close to impossible to make it fair. Even if you count members-only votes there is nothing stopping someone to open 28982398 accounts and vote with each of them, it's just really difficult to judge something like this, the only way is to rely on the judges.
I am sure crestock will do the right thing at the end.
Posted: 27. Nov 2006 by andresr
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
I agree with andresr. I would also like to add another scenario. It has been announced that from week two, registerered members who participate on the contest will not be able to vote. What if I gave everyone else a bad rating before I submitted my work. I will still be able to rate other's work before I submit my entry so again that's not fair. Also, I just came across this post under the contest topic : http://www.crestock.com/forum/Topic1147-15-1.aspx How fair is it someone from the crestock staff choosing their favotire designs ( and this way also promoting them) before week one is over? Voting is still on so I think crestock representatives should not share their personal favorites with people that haven't yet voted? Cheers Konstantinos
Posted: 27. Nov 2006 by 3pod
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
" I think most of us would agree that the scores now look much more like what you'd expect." I'm not sure that I agree with that entirely. Out of ~12000 votes, ~6000 were considered dupe votes, but duplicate voting is not the only means of foul play. I don't necessarily think my submission has to be the best, as art is relative, but there is no chance anyone qualified to give a genuine vote would give some of the best submissions anything below a 5, and yet we have some of these very entries (including mine) at or below 3 even after purging dupes. The kind of thing to look for programmatically might be where certain sessions or ip addresses voted all submissions with less than 3, but voted a single entry with an 8 or above. Or where a session/ip voted for only a single entry. It seems like that would clean a lot up, but that fix isn't without it's own flaws. I can understand the initial desire to make voting public, because it creates instant viral marketing, but it also creates unhealthy competition. It's good that y'all are looking to refine this process in future weeks, because if it keeps up like this, some of the skilled photoshoppers you seek to join this contest may lose faith in the process. The overall atmosphere of a contest is often more important than the entries, the prizes, or who wins, because after all the point is to generate interest, and the atmosphere becomes the context within which that interest is gained. On the contestant side of the fence, I think many people are also enjoying testing how far they can push the stock images you provide, and at the same time it helps to show what is possible with Crestock images + creativity. However, the fact that contest submissions show up immediately after they're posted means that people can see what they're up against which is a double edged blade. On one hand, many people will simply copy what other entrants did and do it better (which might be considered one-upmanship), resulting in duplicated creativity or lack there-of. On the other hand, the quality of the entries steadily goes up as those contestants may let their ideas ferment a bit and pay attention to detail so that the end image looks "right". The result is, I think, that those who post their submissions earlier may be putting themselves at a disadvantage. There are a few creative entries with compelling combinations, but I am looking forward to the next couple weeks with the upped ante where more people will put some thought in their creations and move outside of their photoshop comfort zone. All that said, if things improve as intended, this is going to be a great contest. -Crache
Posted: 27. Nov 2006 by Crache
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
( My english isn't perfect and i do many mistakes , so don't look at this in my post , please ;-)
Everybody seen what had happen yesterday. Duplicate voting, giving 1 to the opponents with high estimate. Administrator see it , delete votes, ok. But today the situation has been repeat. I dont say that all estimates have change but ... i have 70-80 votes .. ok .. i leave home , back in an hour, and what i see ... 230 votes O.o ? Strange .. Only my image and image one person has so many votes. My average estimate go down... and this person... go up ... tell me ... whats going on ? ^^ Does he afraid of my image ? ^^
Dont think im cry or smth ... im only sick when im look at this.
I dont understand why ppl do that!? O.o ...
I have hope that judges choose the best image, without looking on stupid votes.
Gretzz !
Paula
Posted: 28. Nov 2006 by masumi
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
Not sure, either people were trying to vote spam you to try and get your submission disqualified or just downvote it. Wouldn't worry too much about that, Crestock will clean up the votes again on Wednesday. Your submission is simple, but focuses well on complementary colors and an alkaselzer spring type of feeling, so it should do fine in the end despite these voting problems. -Crache
Posted: 28. Nov 2006 by Crache
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
I'm sorry if I offended someone by posting my thoughts on the entries for the first week, I wasn't under the impression that my voice has that great a bearing on peoples opinion.
These where quite simply my personal thoughts on the submissions, I am not one of the judges, I have no greater sway on the outcome of the contest than anyone else.
Posted: 28. Nov 2006 by Elbajong
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
I agree that some of the voting seems dodgy, and that it would far better if it was decided by the panel. I am not convinced though that all the voting irregularities were attempts to play the system. For example, I don't know any of the entrants but may have duplicate voted, as I came back a couple of times over a few days to vote on the newest entries and wasn't sure where I'd left off the previous time!
From previous posts on the forum (not mentioning any names) some of the complaints may be from people with sour grapes, who perhaps feel their skill level is higher than other members might? (not targeted at anyone in particular)
Again, all this can be solved by letting the panel be responsible for 100% of the judging.
Posted: 29. Nov 2006 by Krisdog
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
Naturally not every invalid vote is done intentionally, but it goes without saying that at least 90+% of the invalid votes were probably done intentionally. I don't think there's any way to curb that likely fact. I haven't noticed any sour grapes either, but I think if you invest time in something that appears to be getting handled unfairly you would feel compelled to speak up as well. The best entries have clean enough photoshop work that it is difficult or impossible to judge their actual skill level just by looking at the kind of image they decided to produce, only the level of skill required for the image. However, it can only be expected that some people will like their own entry the most because they have grown attached to it. Skill level is only one factor, as creativity and impact/appeal are just as important. As with anything, too much or too little of each can be undesirable. So if some are voted lower than they should be, it can be because of lack of "bam!" impact, not necessarily because it isn't good for it's own purpose. -Crache
Posted: 29. Nov 2006 by Crache
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
The winners for week 1 are both from Poland and both have images that look like they're done by the exact same person? Even the post-sharpening on the images is the same. It's possible they know eachother and learned the same way, but sheesh. :) Congrats to Piotr Misiak? I apologize if it is legit. http://www.crestock.com/artist/masumi
http://www.crestock.com/artist/velendil I hate to keep ragging on the contest because I'm enjoying it and I'm doing it more in the spirit of art than competition, but I am not convinced this is going well. :D Looking forward to the next 3 weeks though, I like the week 2 images already. -Crache
Posted: 29. Nov 2006 by Crache
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
looking at the winners and runners up, I gotta say that in my opinion it all came good in the end. Great choices!!!
probably save on a lot of hassle though if the judges just decide in future!
Posted: 29. Nov 2006 by Krisdog
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
Krisdog (11/29/2006)
looking at the winners and runners up, I gotta say that in my opinion it all came good in the end. Great choices!!!
probably save on a lot of hassle though if the judges just decide in future!
Yeah I totally agree :) I was glad to see that :P
Posted: 1. Dec 2006 by andresr
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
Crache (11/29/2006)
The winners for week 1 are both from Poland and both have images that look like they're done by the exact same person? Even the post-sharpening on the images is the same. It's possible they know eachother and learned the same way, but sheesh. :) Congrats to Piotr Misiak? I apologize if it islegit.
http://www.crestock.com/artist/masumi
http://www.crestock.com/artist/velendil
I hate to keep ragging on the contest because I'm enjoying it and I'm doing it more in the spirit of art than competition, but I am not convinced this is going well. :D Looking forward to the next 3 weeks though, I like the week 2 images already.
-Crache
Omg Crache ... me and Piotr its not the same person. We have only similar styles ...and i dont even know this guy . So stop think out so stupid things! ^^
Gretzz.. Paula :]
Posted: 2. Dec 2006 by masumi
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
No prob, like I said, I apologize if it's legit, but the thought is far from stupid because the styles are that similar. Hope you understand. At the time I didn't realize there are so many people from Poland participating in this, but there are a lot. :) -Crache
Posted: 3. Dec 2006 by Crache
RE: Photoshop competition - voting not fair?
Just a thought, but do you suppose people could be getting confused about which end of the scale is "High" and which is "Low"? That could explain some of what I see as abnormally low scoring across the board.
Posted: 3. Dec 2006 by lynx17
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